HOLY WARS IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

India and Pakistan emerged as two independent states after an ideological battle between the Congress and Muslim league that ended in bloody partition of the sub-continent. At that point in history, fundamentalist forces on either side were against partition, yet their vision, agenda and actions were the major contributing factors towards the sordid turn of events in the end. They have grown in strength over the past sixty years and the increasing holy wars in the subcontinent are, in part, an outcome of actions and reactions of these opposing religious groups.
      When partition was accepted as the only practical solution in those turbulent times by the two major parties namely the Congress and Muslim league, the hardline religious groups opposed it for reasons that were similar in terms of interpreataion of the past and vision of the future. Of them, the most prominent opposition on the Hindu side was from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National volunteer’s organization). M.S.Gowalkar, the then head concretized a vision of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) as the entire subcontinent, according him, is the ancestral land of Hindus, and the Muslims were essentially foreign invaders. This ideology of the RSS has essentially remained the same for the past sixty years and they along with their family of organizations called the ‘Sangh Parivar’ have not shed their aim of establishing a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ in the place of secular India.
    On the other end, Syed Abul A’ala Maududi -founder of Jamaat-e-Islami- among others, refuted the idea of partition as he believed that it was the ordained right of Muslims to run the subcontinent and that partition was a compromise arrived at by the League. He nurtured thoughts on political Islam that had significant influence on various pan-Islamist movements across different regions including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian revolution. He rejected the idea of a liberal democratic Pakistan as envisaged by Jinnah and his protégés, and instead sought establishment of a Theo-democratic Islamic state where religion will inform all aspects of life.
      Militant religious groups, both Hindu and Islamist, have emerged in India and Pakistan in the past sixty years that have fuelled fundamentalism and extremism in the region. Some of the radical Hindu groups in India are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Bajrang dal (Army of Lord Hanuman), which are close to the Hindu right wing Bharatiya Janata Party and their parent organization, the RSS. However, in recent times far extreme right wing Hindu organizations such as Abhinav Bharat, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Sri Ram Sena and Hindu samhati have spurred up and steadily increased their prescence across different parts of the country. These groups do not seem to operate in isolation as pictures show their leaders sharing platform on many occasions. They also recruit cadres for their cause and provide training in armed combat. Recently, they were allegedly involved in a revenge bomb blast in a predominantly Muslim town in the Indian province of Maharashtra involving a serving army officer. They also vehemently protest against evangelism and do not hesitate to vandalise churches and attack Christian minorities.
      Pakistan’s very idea behind her creation, tortuous political history and strategic policies gave rise to several puritanical Islamist movements apart from Jamaat-e-Islami. These groups helped to bolster the credentials of Pakistan’s establishment and integrity of the country as a multi-ethnic religious state, and to wage proxy wars in India and Afghanistan. As a result, religion began to occupy primacy in the Constitution and Governance in Pakistan ever since 1956. These militant religious groups now want to pursue their larger agenda of Pan-Islamism by involving themselves in global Jihad. Evidence of this has been the reported prescence of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba cadres in Bosnia, Iraq, Chechnya, Philippines, and Xinjiang fighting for their religious brethern. The religious groups see themselves as warriors countering the Hindu-Christian-Zionist nexus against Islam and ‘ummah’ worldwide.
    India’s record of communal harmony is not a rosy one in the post-independent era. However, the Ramjanma bhoomi (Lord Ram’s birthplace) movement in the eighties is a pivotal point in Independent India’s history as far as inter-communal relations are concerned. When the ancient mosque built by the first Mughal Emperor Babur was demolished in 1992, the Hindu right considered this as a reversal of past and realisation of lost civilisational heritage. On the other hand, the Indian Muslims, in considerable number like never before, began to doubt the premise and the idea behind the Indian state, as it utterly failed to prevent the demolition and the riots that followed in the aftermath. Few of them began to identify themselves with the oppressed Muslim populace worldwide and organizations like Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) changed its color from a social organization to a militant one. Extremist elements in Pakistan allegedly helped by the ISI began to recruit and indoctrinate Indian cadres for the first time to strike terror inside India at different places from Mumbai to Delhi to Coimbatore.
    The events in the year 2001-2002 changed South-Asia. Global paranoia after 9/11 and the first televised riots in the Indian state of Gujarat with alleged complicity of state agencies further eroded many Indian Muslims ‘Indian’ identity. The more radical among those identify and volunteer themselves with Pan-Islamist fundamentalist groups and their cause across the world, including of those in Pakistan. Signs of this disturbing phenomenon were evident when an educated Muslim from Bangalore volunteered to be a suicide bomber in Glasgow terrorist attacks and when some Muslim youth from the southern Indian state of Kerala were arrested for insurgency in the Indian administered Kashmir.
    Fundamentalism begets fundamentalism. To counter it effectively and free the region from vicious cycle of violence and terror, it is essential that the saner voices take the lead against these destabilizing forces. Unfortunately, the secular parties waver and yield to the demands of fundamentalist forces on more than one occasion due to short-term political gains and a tendency of appeasement. This happens in India and more so often in Pakistan, and history of both these countries is replete with examples. Consequently, moderate forces take the backseat while extremism flourishes and acquires greater power and influence in the society, including among the army and the bureaucracy. Pakistan’s present existential struggle is in a major way, a manifestation of such political dynamics. Fortunately, India’s very diversity and coalition politics has avoided similar scenarios as one sees in Pakistan.
    In present times religious fundamentalism and what some call Islamo-fascism is the major threat to peace and stability in the region and the world at large. Even the isuue of Kashmir seems to be just a part of the larger picture. The recent controversy surrounding Amarnath shrine board in the disputed territory is a pointer to the broader clash between the fundamentalists in the sub-continent. Nevertheless, Kashmir is a fodder fed in movements for global jihad and a solution that is acceptable to India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir is imperative in weakening the religious zealots.
      Leadership in Pakistan and to some extent in India has failed to meet the expectations of the people. As a result, unredressed grievances and a sense of injustice create a volatile situation only to be exploied by religious fundamentalists thereby making prospects of peace and prosperity difficult to attain. The region and its populace has been longing for responsible and committed leadership who can look after their immediate concern of livelihood security. Alas, there are no signs of that yet. Until there is a strengthening of modern secular leadership that can take on fundamentalism and devote itself to development, camaraderie and stability in South Asia will be difficult to acheive, if not elusive.